SUM 
a. A 
1 
J L ULLLBi h. 
THE SILVER HORN 
A Forest Idyl 
By PAULINA BRANDRETH 
I T chanced that one day in mid August I was 
fishing on a certain stream in the North 
country. I he weather was wonderfully 
clear. Not a tear glistened in any corner of 
the horizon, and the sun smote hot and golden 
on the moving waters and alder-banked margins. 
Frequently little clouds like puffs of gray and 
white smoke rose over the balsam spires and 
sailed across the blue transparency of the sky. 
For several hours our luck had been most 
gratifying. One after another of the fat, bright- 
spotted trout had been pulled out from the 
shadow of glaucous alder leaves, from dark icy 
deeps near submerged logs, or from some yel¬ 
low pool at the end of a sparkling ripple. Still, 
when Reuben consulted his watch and found 
that it was nearly 2 o’clock and mildly sug¬ 
gested that we put ashore to prepare the feast 
of Silenus, we hailed the idea with no mean 
enthusiasm. 
In the hour of anticipation, while the tea was 
bubbling and the little trout curling and snap¬ 
ping in the frying-pan, I looked about for a com¬ 
fortable spot to await its fulfilment. In doing 
so, I stumbled over a well worn deer trail and 
curiosity led me to follow it for a short distance 
up the bank of the stream. As I stepped over 
an old log something half hidden under the leaf- 
mould and crumbling wood caught my eye. I 
stooped down and picked it up. It proved to 
be a deer horn, white with age, but almost per¬ 
fectly preserved. No wood mice had disfigured 
it with their teeth, nor rain or snow affected 
the luster of the bone. There were four prongs, 
long and keen and delicate, and polished so 
white that they appeared almost silvery. Then 
as I looked at it there came unexpectedly to my 
mind the memory of a tale I had once heard; 
a tale told to me by one who, like Mowgli 
himself, had been mothered and nurtured in the 
wilderness. Little by little, holding the silvery 
horn in my hand, the memory of the whole nar¬ 
rative came back to me; the red glow of the 
night fire, the canopy of stars, the strange pas¬ 
sive brightness of the narrator’s eyes as he 
spoke on and on with the slowness born of 
solitude. And this is the story as I remember it. 
The sun was going down. Already cool drafts 
of air, laden with a dream-enchanting fragrance, 
floated from the forest and were wafted down 
file wandering reaches of a wilderness stream, 
insects could be seen dancing over the water, 
while here and there a sunlit blade of grass 
gently swayed and rippled with the current. 
Back from the stream and reared in solemn 
Gothic beauty against the swimming light of the 
west, stood the forest, silent, darkened, mys¬ 
terious. Tomaso, stretched upon a grassy bank 
and shielded from wary eyes by a matted growth 
of alders, watched the stream run by and waited 
for the sun to go down. A short maple pole 
lay at his side. To the end was attached a 
stout fishing line and a wicked looking hook, 
generously baited. From time to time a trout 
rose to the surface of the pool over which he 
was mounting guard. But Tomaso was patient, 
for he knew that to capture the grisly-jawed 
prize of his dreams he must be crafty and not 
in too great a hurry. Tomaso, moreover, was 
a good fisherman and a still better hunter. But 
then he came into the inheritance of both these 
accomplishments quite naturally. Just two miles 
down stream from the place where he was fish¬ 
ing, situated on a dry “level” under the shelter 
of a small spruce-stacked hill, stood a large wig¬ 
wam; and here lived his Indian father and Belle 
la Claire, his French mother. Tomaso was an 
odd mixture of both. Like his father in bygone 
days, he was lithe and vigorous of body, with a 
clear, bronze complexion and lean, strong hands. 
From this parent also he had received the heri¬ 
tage of keen eyesight, acute hearing and all the 
attributes and crafts of the forest dweller. But 
to his mother he owed something greater than 
any of these. Since childhood he had always 
been sensitively alive to the mystery that sur¬ 
rounded his wandering life in the wilderness, 
and to this, as he grew older, was added a fine 
and unstinting sense of the beautiful. Often it 
shone directly in the expression of his light, 
clear hazel eyes, or again by a few words spoken 
to his mother when they were alone and in touch 
with that profound solitude which ever linked 
their souls in close harmony. He sometimes re¬ 
vealed the hidden passions of poet and dreamer. 
Many there were, especially among his father’s 
people, who hated him for this very thing—hated 
simply because they could not understand. But, 
perhaps, they were also jealous of his physical 
perfections; of the high, open forehead and of 
a certain quiet force in his bearing that carried 
with it an element of power. 
The afternoon sunlight waned, sank and was 
quenched in a bowl of yellow mist, while lumi¬ 
nous clouds broke from the sky and threw glow¬ 
ing shapes on the floor of the stream. Tomaso 
lifted the fishing rod from the grass and dex¬ 
terously dropped the bait into the pool below. 
Twice he did this, placing it each time in a 
likely looking spot. Then with a clever motion 
of the wrist he cast out toward the opposite 
bank, sending the worm directly under the over¬ 
hanging darkness of the alders. Scarcely had 
it disappeared from sight than the line jerked 
sharply taut, the rod curved downward like a 
whalebone, and gripping the butt firmly, Tomaso 
sprang to his feet. Five minutes later the big, 
two-pound trout was lifted from his icy sanctum 
and thrown on the bank to be immediately 
pounced upon and secured. 
As he looked at the quivering orange sides 
and leviathan proportions of his capture, Tomaso 
secretly gloated. Breaking a small birch twig 
he slipped the trout on this, and parting the 
bushes made his way to the stream where on 
a narrow sand spit his canoe lay drawn up. 
The current was swift and the water fairly 
high. He used his paddle with little effort and 
drifted swiftly down stream, rounding first one 
bend, then another, now passing a strip of yel¬ 
low-green marshland, now floating between 
banks abloom with wild roses and meadow sweet. 
Once, on turning a corner, he surprised a sleek 
doe standing on a shallow causeway of sand, 
and again further on a big crane jumped up 
before him and went lumbering off with stilt¬ 
like legs trailing ridiculously. After a mile or 
more of this travel, Tomaso came upon his 
favorite reach of the stream, a deep, long pool, 
perhaps a hundred yards from end to end. Glid¬ 
ing out upon this little lake he saw floating just 
ahead of his canoe an object which had never 
been there before. With curiosity he drove his 
paddle deep in the water and shot forward. 
Cupped between glossy green leaves, held up by 
them like some sacred chalice to the gods of 
twilight, swam a great crimson lotus. It was 
of that blood-red hue one occasionally sees in 
a June sunset, while toward the center the color 
shaded to the richer, more concrete luster of a 
ruby. To Tomaso’s eyes it seemed to quiver 
and pulsate with a contained fire as though some 
magic fluid ran through each delicately-traced 
vein. And as he looked upon it an odd feeling 
of mingled awe and pleasure flooded his senses 
and he desired but one thing—to possess it for 
his own. Leaning from his craft he slipped his 
hand under the wet leaves, then his fingers, im¬ 
pelled by some unseen direction, closed about the 
stem. Presently he was conscious of a vague 
sweetness filling his nostrils, as gently and firmly 
he pulled it from its slender moorings and laid 
it in the bottom of the canoe. 
From that moment Tomaso fell under the in¬ 
fluence of a spell, delicious and overpowering. 
The winding vistas of the stream, the pale blue 
of the evening heavens, with here and there a 
